Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology 13, 2013 © PTPN &
Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Pozna 2013
WOJCIECH NOWIK Chair Department of Theory of Music, Fryderyk Chopin
University of Music, Warsaw
‘Petrarch's Sonnets’ by Liszt
ABSTRACT: The article ‘Petrarch’s Sonnets’ by Liszt revolves around
the phenomenon of transfor mation, which dominated F. Liszt’s
works. His impressive composing achievements made Liszt an
unequalled author of all types of elaborations, paraphrases,
adaptations, transcripts of both his own and other composer’s
works, representing various styles and epochs. What is more, the
transforma tion techniques employed by Liszt, different from the
commonly applied evolutionary ones, coupled with extended tonality
and harmony as well as new textures, resulted in an extremely broad
scale of expression and subtly diverse expressive effects. Three of
Petrarch’s Sonnets from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta collection
are dedicated to Laura and represent this article’s major area of
interest. The Hungarian composer worked on them three times: twice
he composed them as songs and once as a piano triptych included in
the Années de Pèlerinage. Dèuxieme Année: Italie series. His
interpretation of the Sonnets, as well as the remaining works in
the series, was inspired by the art of the old Italian masters
married with the Romantic idea of correspond ence des artes. While
it is a part of artistic tradition to turn poetic works into songs
(resulting in the vocal lyrics so typical of Romanticism), adding a
musical dimension to a sonnet, a piece of poetry with a specific
organisation of its content, a unique form and verse discipline,
seems risky. It is extremely difficult to successfully transfer
equivalent themes and structures onto a different medium i.e. piano
music. By turning to Petrarch’s Sonnets, Liszt created congenial
palimpsests, reflecting the syntactical and formal rudiments of the
verse but, first and foremost, managing to portray Laura in new
incarna tions, subtly changing in the eternal search for the ideal
of femininity, the so-called “Ewig-weibliche”. Especially in the
piano version, Liszt seems to have accomplished the esoteric
subtlety of the “Sprache über Sprache” available to and understood
solely by poets and those in the know.
KEYWORDS: Franz Liszt, Années de Pèlerinage. Dèuxieme Année -
Italie, piano music, Sonetto 47 del Petrarca, Sonetto 104 del
Petrarca, Sonetto 123 del Petrarca
Ferenc Liszt was one of the most extraordinary composers of the
nine teenth century. Even just a fleeting glimpse of his creative
output allows us to recognize that he was a unique phenomenon,
extremely fertile in his production of elaborations, modifications,
paraphrases, and transcriptions. In other words, we are struck with
the great polyversity of musical works, his own and not his
own.1
This topic is complex and has wide ramifications. It deserves to be
considered in its own right, while its determinants and numerous
repercussions - cultural, social, historical, aesthetic, or
technical - call for careful analysis and thoughtful evaluation.
This essay touches on these wider questions, but will focus largely
on the historical-genetic and intertextual issues directly relating
to the subject introduced
1 The terms introduced in this article certainly need to be defined
or redefined. Here, howe ver, we shall use them sparingly and
clarify their meaning and range as necessary.
in the title. Since the narrow confines of the article prevent a
more comprehensive treatment, only the most important problems can
be indicated here.
The sonnets of Francesco Petrarch and Dante Alighieri, two
outstanding rep resentatives of the Italian trecento, are a
paragon of lyrical poetry, taken up and developed by later
generations of poets. Their narratives, stories typical of the
genre, saturated with themes of love in a very broad sense, not
only existential but also metaphysical, usually conclude with
reflective-philosophical themes. The elaborate form of the sonnet,
a demanding test of technical perfection, has in its main varieties
(Italian and French) been the object of poetic endeavour in various
times and epochs. Following a period of stagnation in the 18th
century, the son net enjoyed a renaissance in the romantic period.
This renaissance was evident in many different centres. The most
distinguished poets tried their hand at this lyrical genre in
England (William Wordsworth, John Keats), Russia (Alexander
Pushkin), Germany (Heinrich Heine, Nikolaus Lenau), Poland (Adam
Mickiewicz, Juliusz Sowacki, Seweryn Goszczyski), and France
(Théophile Gautier, Théodore de Banville). Notably, fascination
with the sonnet in the romantic age transcended the confines of
literature to penetrate the territory of music. While the practice
of putting poetic texts into the song form is quite understandable
and true to the com posing tradition, especially in romantic vocal
lyrics, the elimination of text and the ‘transference’ of the
sonnet, a strictly literary genre, to the field of instrumental
lyrics is surely a unique, antynomie form of creative activity, one
which undermines the fundamental principles of the literaiy-formal
original model. This is precisely what Ferenc Liszt did and his
complex activities in this field are in need of an
explanation.
Liszt chose three of Petrarch’s sonnets from the collection Rerum
vulgarium fragmenta: Sonetto 47‘Benedetto sia Vgiomo...’, Sonetto
104 ‘Pace non irouo...’and Sonetto 123 ‘I ’vidi in terra...’. He
composed three musical versions to each poem. The circumstances of
their creation and the reasons underlying their polyversity are
interesting. Equally intriguing are Liszt’s artistic objectives and
his constructive- technical transformations of the different
versions of each piece. A separate and no less important question
is how to capture and explain their complex meanings.
Liszt originally turned these sonnets by Petrarch into songs, and
Haslinger published them in 1846.2 They provide testimony to the
composer’s fascination with the Italian master’s poetic texts, as
well as his deep-seated need to express his own attitude towards
the poet’s art. Another important factor behind the ori gin of
these songs was Liszt’s personal experience of his, at that stage
still happy, relationship with Countess d’Agoult. Their travels to
Italy had a very fruitful effect on Ferenc’s work. He wrote in a
letter to Berlioz:
The beauty o f this blessed patch o f the earth loomed before me in
its purest and most
sublime forms. Art revealed itself in all its wonder and uncovered
its universality and
2 In the catalogue of Liszt’s works the first vocal version is
dated 1842-6. Cf. The New Grove Dictionary o f Music and Musicians,
ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 14, 854.
unity before my amazed eyes. When I felt it and reflected upon it,
every day strength
ened in me the awareness that all products o f the spirit are
secretly related. Raphael
and Michelangelo helped me to understand Mozart and Beethoven; John
o f Pisa, Fra
Beato and Francia explained Allegri, Marcello and Palestrina to me;
Titian and Rossini
appeared to me to be related stars. The Colosseum and Campo Santo
are not as distant
as you may think from the Symphonie [funèbre et] triomphale and
Requiem. Dante
found his artistic expression in Orgagnia and Michelangelo; perhaps
someday he will
find his musical reflection through some future Beethoven.3
This fragment of Liszt’s letter is veiy important. It contains
fundamental ob servations on the composer’s aesthetic opinions
relating to the romantic ‘cor respondance des arts’; it emphasizes
the unity of the arts and the capacity for different artistic
disciplines not only to permeate one another but also to merge into
one unity; it also underlies the ease with which Liszt sought
naturally diverse inspirations and created different versions of
his works and changed his means of execution to express them, and
to capture their meaning and spirit.
In addition to the reasons given which may have led Liszt to choose
Petrarch’s Sonnets and to render them in song form, it is important
to remember that the popular name of the poet’s collection was II
Canzoniere,4 i.e. A Book o f Songs. It seems unlikely that this had
no effect on the composer’s ideas and activities. Both the name of
the volume and the poetic forms it included point quite clearly to
their historically confirmed close connections with music. Ferenc
Liszt soon transformed the three songs into pieces for the piano
and he published this version in the cycle Années de pèlerinage.
Deuxieme année: Italie. We must remember that when he was composing
his songs to Petrarch’s texts, Liszt already had in his portfolio
the pieces which he planned to include in this collection: the
opening Sposalizio [Mar riage] inspired by Raphael’s painting, and
number two, II Pensiero [The Thinker], inspired by Michelangelo’s
sculpture of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The three sonnets for the piano
were thus an important addition to a broadly conceived whole, all
the more so since outlines of the final parts of the cycle, with
significant literary refer ences, entitled Après un lecture du
Dante, fantasia quasi sonata, were ready by 1837.® Hence what we
have here is probably the final phase of Liszt’s work on the
‘musical equivalents’ of other disciplines, which began with the
attempts inspired by the art of Raphael and Buonarroti and then
Dante and Petrarch. Collecting them in one publication thus becomes
very important for the composer, both aesthetically and
ideologically. What is more, through these works Liszt underscores
the poetic
3 Quoted after Stanislaw Szenic, Franciszek Liszt [Ferenc Liszt]
(Warszawa: PIW, 1969), 120- 1.
4 The Canzoniere contains sonnets, canzones, sextines, ballads and
madrigals, that is, poetic forms, most of which have their musical
equivalents.
5 Suffice it to say here that Liszt performed the fantasia as an
autonomous piece in Vienna in 1839, prior to the publication of the
cycle.
nature of music and the musicality of poetry. He also strives to
elevate the poetic message by treating music as a romantic form of
‘Sprache über Sprache’ which, being a universal language, freely
transcends the boundaries between the different artistic
disciplines and also transcends the cultural, historical and ethnic
framework.
It is surprising that Liszt should have produced a new version of
the three songs based on Petrarch’s sonnets in 1861. This suggests
that he had important reasons to undertake the effort of composing
new versions of the already existing vocal pieces and their
instrumental mutations. What is more, as in the case of the piano
versions, Liszt changed the original order of the songs, reversing
the order and numbering of songs one and two.6
Version and date o f publication
Collection number
Main key
Bars
A fla t Lento, ma sempre un poco mosso
92
I I 1858 1 4/4 6/4
Piano D flat Preludio con moto/ Sempre mosso con intimo
sentimento
95
II I 1883 1 4/4 Baritone or mezzo-soprano with piano
D flat Andante un poco mosso
93
piano A fla t
Più agitato/Lento
79
110
6 Establishing precisely when the different versions o f the
sonnets were composed requires a separate source research project.
There are several reasons for the existing lack of clarity, in
cluding the pieces’ polyversity, their incorporation in cycles
differing in content and chronology, different times of composition
of the various components o f the cycle, and different times and
places o f publication. Information on these issues varies and has
been edited in different ways. Therefore, the main source of
information here will be the most detailed and already quoted entry
in The New Grove Dictionary o f Music and Musicians (2nd edition,
2001).
Version and date o f publication
Collection number
Main key
Bars
Tenor with piano
II 3 4/4 Piano A fla t
Lento placido/
F
Molto lento e placido/ Un poco meno lento / Molto lento
98
Several general conclusions can be drawn from these data: 1. Only
the first version of the collection retains the same main key for
all the
Sonnets whereas the next version gradually introduces a change of
key until finally each Sonnet has a different key and the second
one, like Liszt’s Bagatelle sans tonalité,7 which has no central
key and basically draws its inspiration from Fétis’s idea of ordre
pluritonique;8
2. The last, vocal version of the Sonnets has longer musical texts
than the remaining versions;
3. Both vocal versions are meant for male voices: the first one for
a tenor and the second one for a baritone, although a mezzo-soprano
is an accepted alterna tive for the first and third Sonnet [the
elimination of a female alternative for the second Sonnet would
require a separate explanation];
4. The first and last Sonnet develop the narrative in slow tempos,
oscillating between Adagio and Andante; only the second Sonnet
contrasts the tempos in all its versions by introducing not only
slow tempos but also fast ones, Allegro and Presto; the additional
notations alongside the tempos unequivocally indicate their
expressive character, determined by the content of the
Sonnets.
We must begin our analysis of the different versions by briefly
characterising the sonnet form, which served as the inspirational
model for Liszt. Structurally, a sonnet has fourteen lines grouped
into two quatrains and two tercinas (triplets). These produce two
basic formal segments. Each segment usually forms a separate
7 I discuss the problem of tonality in: Wojciech Nowik, “Symptomy
przeomu tonalnego w twórczoci Chopina i Liszta w wietle teorii
Chorona i Fétisa” [The symptoms of tonal crisis in the work of
Chopin and Liszt vis-â-vis Choron and Fétis’s theory], in: Musica
theoretica - musica practica. Muzyka ije j konteksty, vol. 9, ed.
Teresa Brodniewicz, Hanna Kostrzewska, Janina Tatarska (Pozna:
Akademia Muzyczna, 1995), 103-111.
8 François-Joseph Fétis, Traité complet de la theorié et de la
pratique de l’harmonie (Paris: Schlesinger, 1844).
thematic unit.9 Also important for this literary genre are the
syntactic-intonational elements of each segment and the stanza
rhyme systems. In other words, sonnets are short and concise
literary works and they have their own specific formal-
architectural discipline. In order to create their musical
counterparts, Liszt would have to compose forms which were succinct
and compact, similar to Chopin’s aphoristic Preludes op. 28, or
Alban Berg’s charming vocal miniatures op. 4 com posed to Peter
Altenberg’s Ansichtskartentexten [Postcard texts],10 also laconic
in their poetic-musical expression, which followed more than half a
century later.
Liszt took a different path. He preferred romantic
grandiloquence.11 Hence, as far as these pieces are concerned, we
merely find loose formal-syntactic analogies with the literary
original. Even in the song versions the composer no longer observes
the discipline imposed by the caesuras and clauses of the poetic
original; he produces reduplications or multi-reduplications of
fragments of the text, using expressive, emphatic quotations, e.g.
of the name of Laura, or repeating phrases relating to the feelings
of the lyrical subject and by so doing he obviously interferes with
the poem’s original construction. Liszt retains the rudimentary
syntax in the form of the six bars (3+3) or eight bars (4+4)
structure, the equivalents of the sonnet’s quatrains or triplets.
Interestingly, this sort of syntax dominates the version of the
Sonnets for solo piano.
The unique expression of the Sonnets, as far genre generalities are
concerned, and the simultaneous retention of obvious differences,
is achieved by means of many subtle, or even sublime, closely
united technical means. This observation needs to be developed
further. Liszt eschewed a priori form in favour of expres sive
form. This change of approach to form is associated with various
techniques of development of contexts and their transformation,
retaining the composer’s dominant and characteristic technique of
metamorphic change. Equally important are the extremely rich and
innovative textures which determine the subtle changes of mood, so
exquisitely outlined in Petrarch’s Sonnets.
Sonnet 47, ‘Benedetto sia I’giorno...’, is an apology of time in
its various dimen sions and moments, and of the places where
Francesco met Laura. In the piece’s conclusion, words of praise are
addressed to poetiy which allowed the author to render Petrarch’s
ideal image of Laura in verse, and to make his name famous.
Time and its musical measures are the very essence of Liszt’s
Sonnet and are also essential to the music’s symbolic message. The
composer measures out this
9 Cf. Michai Gowiski, Teresa Kostkiewiczowa, Janusz Sawiski, Sownik
terminów litera ckich [A dictionary of literary terms] (Wrocaw:
Ossolineum, 1998); entry: “Sonet” [Sonnet], 517-8.
10 Italian and Spanish sonnet songs o f the Renaissance originally
retained the two-part form o f the poetic structure. This pattern
was later rejected. Cf. Józef Chomiski, Kiystyna
Wilkowska-Chomiska, Formy muzyczne, vol. 3: Pie [Musical forms,
vol. 3: Song] (Kraków: PWM, 1974), 190-3.
11 As did Stanisaw Moniuszko when he composed his cantata Sonety
krymskie [Sonnets from the Crimea] in 1867 to a cycle of poems by
Mickiewicz with the same title. Cesar Cui composed songs to
Mickiewicz’s Stepy akermaskie [The Akerman Steppe] from the same
cycle. Thus composers chose various routes.
time with a clocksmith’s precision. He also does it with great
finesse, applying different, structurally integrated rhythmic means
in each version. In order to do so he uses a stratomorphic texture
whose different layers have a different metric (this needs to be
particularly emphasized). These layers complement one another,
producing a very consistent continuum. Into this continuum the
composer has wound the main melodic theme whose motifs can also be
found in the different layers of the accompaniment, which
undoubtedly has an integrating influence. It is also noteworthy
that in the last vocal version the composer modified the me lodic
and based it on the trochaic metre. Trochaios (Gr.) means
‘running’, which may be interpreted as a metaphor of continually
running time, thus intensifying the piece’s musical-poetic message.
The meticulous treatment of time in all the versions of this sonnet
can be seen in the composer’s numerous performance directions:
Preludio con moto, sempre unpoco mosso, quasi in tempo, in tempo ma
sempre rubato, or their occasional variations, whose function is to
speed up or slow down the narrative. We also find a number of more
detailed comments combining references to time with subjective
expressive notations, e.g. sempre mosso con intimo
sentimento.
rail. _ _ Preludio con moto
It is worth mentioning that the musical form of Sonnet 47
‘Benedetto sia I giomo...’has a number of analogies with the
tripartite form with reprise features, where the second part is a
modified repetition of the first part in a tritone rela tion while
the third part is a synthetic, selective repetition of material
from the introduction and from the preceding parts: time goes round
in a circle but does not repeat events, it merely seems to recall
them, to reflect them.
Sonnet 104 ‘Pace non trovo...’ describes the poet’s internal
conflict, uncertain hopes and expectations concerning his love for
Laura. The intensity and pain of conflicting feelings which keep
tormenting the poet, feelings ranging from joy to profound misery,
from hope to doubt, from fiery passion to coldness, from life to
death, this stream of forever-changing thoughts leads to extreme
despair and spiritual prostration, against which poetry is the only
refuge.
The musical elaboration of this Sonnet recalls the variation rondo,
a very popular or even fashionable form at the time, but Liszt
introduces a number of his own solutions in terms of structure and
expression. This is a monothematic rondo, with refrains but without
episodes, which develops in three quite different phases: 1. M olto
espressivo... cantabile con passione, 2. M olto appassionato, 3.
Dolce dolente. The musical theme undergoes very intensive
metamorphoses. This is achieved by introducing new accompaniments,
changing the registers, diversify ing the texture, adding new
melodic themes, changing the tempo and dynamics. The considerable
density of these operations serves to portray a variety of states
of romantic affectation, associated with sudden, frenetic changes
of feeling, and intense passion. In the piano version every phase
has a caesura created by a cadenza which is quite unusual in both
form and expression. These are typically virtuoso cadenzas
requiring great technical skill but their purpose is not just to
make an impression by producing as many sounds as possible in a
given period of time. Earlier, in 1844, Chopin demonstrated the new
colouristic potential of virtuoso piano textures in Berceuse in
D-flat major op. 57 (originally called Variantes), a cycle of
variations based on the ground bass.12 The impressionists were
later to utilize this potential widely. Liszt took the path
originally indicated by Chopin. His intention, however, was not
only to demonstrate the new sound qualities inherent in virtuoso
cadenzas but above all to show the subtle references to the poet’s
state of mind, the Sonnet’s main theme.
Compared with the piano versions, the vocal versions of this work
restructure the material differently, have a different texture, but
also differ with respect to the recitatives and arias. They do not
have the virtuoso cadenzas with their character istic
architectural-expressive functions. Also, in the second vocal
version, which has no central key, the composer resegments and
adapts the material in an original
12 Cf. Wojciech Nowik, “The Expression of Form and Form of
Expression. Fryderyk Cho pin’s Berceuse in D-flat major, Op. 57,
in the Interpretation o f Josef Hofman”, in: Chopin in Performance:
History, Theory, Practice, ed. Artur Szklener (Warszawa: NIFC,
2004), 273-286.
Z. 6785
Example 2. Sonnet 104, b. 44-53
way, especially in the introduction to the piano part where the
second, recitative segment, absent at first, now appears in the
work’s final part as a sequence of sounds of the ninth G-sharp
major chord which has no resolution. Its sounds, ascending at first
in a broad harp arpeggio, lose their impetus at the peak, and begin
to descend more and more slowly until, held back, they disappear
altogether. All is now silence.
p ;
« ® 5 # : fex * ito .
Example 3. Sonnet 104, b. 104-110
The symbolism of this conclusion is complex. It refers directly to
the poet’s frustrated hope and prostration; more generally, it may
symbolize a lost goal, confusion, emptiness. This symbolism also
fits into the particular historical and cultural context. The
second version of the Sonnets was published in the year of Wagner’s
death. Wagner was Ferenc’s friend and son-in-law and the most out
standing representative, alongside Liszt, of the so-called New
German School. He was also a leading representative of the changes
in music which were eventually to dismantle the major-minor tonal
system, i.e. those trends which Fetis prophesied and whose final
phase he termed ordre omnitonique.
Sonnet 123 Tvidi in terra angelici costumi...’, the last of Liszt’s
Sonnets, is an apotheosis of Laura. Petrarch’s poetic rendering
paints a dreamy pprtrait of the beloved: she has exquisite
spiritual and intellectual virtues, harmoniously united, which
situate her at heights accessible only to the gods. Her presence
evokes con cealed jealousy and general admiration which gives way
to enchantment. Words seem to be insufficient to portray Laura’s
captivating grace and unearthly beauty and so the Sonnet does not
tell us anything about her bodily attributes. But it is here that
Petrarch climbs to the summits of poetic lyricism; he describes
nature and the environment as they express their admiration for
Laura, descriptions which ani mate our imagination more powerfully
than any verbalized presentation could do.
Liszt s task was certainly very difficult indeed. He had to find
musical equiva lents with which to convey both the subject and the
scale of the poetic original. He seems to have achieved this most
perfectly in the version for the piano. We find here reflections of
the sonata form, a strictly musical form, based on specific,
dialectic constructional - principles, as some theorists think.13
It is therefore risky,
13 Cf. Carl Dahlhaus, “Zur Theorie der Sonatenexposition”, Musica,
6 (1986/6).
to say the least, to try and transfer it to the lyrical realm. In
practice, however, the rules are not really violated. Liszt may
have based his work on historical prec edents from the Italian
school, or Haydn and Beethoven’s sonatas containing slow, extremely
lyrical movements based nonetheless on the sonata form.14 It was
not until romanticism, however, that these forms were applied in
works belonging to the piano lyrics genre, and even then only to a
limited extent.15 Remember that Liszt already had experience with
producing contaminations or mutations of the sonata form in Les
Cloches de G* [Genève] from the cycle Impressions etpoésis,
published in Album d’un voyageur. Also, as I said before, the
composer already had Fantasia quasi Sonata, which concluded the
cycle Années des Pèlerinage, deuxième année: Italie, also
containing the Sonnets, in his portfolio. This way, the composer
placed side by side the 84-bar sonata miniature and the extremely
elaborate, 377-bar sonata-fantasia. The numbers and one to four
ratios speak for themselves.
The sonata form of Sonnet 123 takes on special features in Liszt’s
approach. True, we can find here many of the solutions typical of
the Italian school described by Francesco Galeazzi,16 for example
thepreludio introduction which will not find the main key until the
final phase, or the first theme - motivo principale - with its
elaborate modulation and characteristic uscita di tono, the second
theme - passo de mezzo, incorporating motifs from the first theme,
in accordance with the theoretical postulate unità delle idee, or
finally the shortened reprise, found in this school, and the coda
based on thematic material and realising the aforementioned ‘unity
of ideas’ postulate. These are structural analogies. They are
testimony to Liszt’s erudition and his rich artistic skill.
However, realization of these ideas was not what the composer
essentially set out to do. Liszt did not produce a two-part form,
in accordance with the Italian school principle. He produced an
extremely compact and expressively condensed three-part form. His
aim was to find musical means adequately befitting the Sonnet’s
content and its poetic message.
Only the piano version has obvious connections with the sonata
form. Although the first vocal version had a number of material and
formal similarities to the piano version, i.e. analogous
introduction and conclusions providing the framework for the
composition, the three-part form, so clearly developed in the
second vocal version, is poorly articulated here. Both vocal
versions also lack the secondary
14 Cf. Wojciech Nowik, Chopinowski idiom sonatowy [Chopin’s sonata
idiom] (Warszawa: UMFC, 1998); idem, “Joseph Haydn - klasyk,
romantyk, konstruktywista w sonatach forte pianowych dedykowanych
Esterhazym” [Joseph Haydn - classicist, romantic, constructivist in
the piano sonatas dedicated to the Esterhazys], in: Händel, Haydn i
idea uniwersalizmu muzyki [Handel, Haydn and the idea of musical
universalism], ed. Ryszard Daniel Golianek, Piotr Urbaski (Pozna:
Katedra Muzykologii UAM, 2010), 85-92.
15 Mendelssohn, Schubert, Liszt, Brahms composed not only piano
sonatas but also piano miniatures based on the sonata form and
their mutations.
16 Francesco Galeazzi, Elementi teorico-pratici di musica (Roma:
Pilucchi Cracas, 1796).
theme and characteristic thematic work. So now let us discuss the
most original version, i.e. the piano one.
The Sonnet begins with a Lento placido introduction which is
crucial for the creation of an appropriate climate. The
poet-composer develops the narrative dolcissimo and espressivo, as
he searches for the right tone amidst unconventional harmonies and
melodic lines. In the repetitions of the final cadence, ultimately
suspended on the E-flat 7-6 dominant (the Chopin chord), he finally
seems to have found the right way. The gradual musical narrative of
the first theme, pro gressing sempre lento, alludes to the
rhapsodic style. The melody, so crucial for the whole work, is
rendered cantando et dolcissimo and is complemented with ‘harp’
chords, based on the stable A-flat note, validating the found,
proper tone. The subsequent narrative, with articulated threads,
echoing the motifs, leads us toward the second theme in minor key
of the dominant E-flat. Structurally, this key combines motifs from
the introduction and the previous theme and is a concentration of a
special lyricism. The vocal nature of the work also helps to
achieve this. The main melodic motif is produced from melically
complex, multi-layer material as a first-plan element: fundamental
sounds and motifs appear ‘monophonically’, anticipating the
accompaniment which follows in its wake. This principle is applied
to almost complete thematic areas of the Sonnet, whatever the
texture. The theme, with its dreamily rocking melody, gradually
transforms, ascending ecstatically in chord progressions, finally
to culminate. It comes to a halt in the high register, reduced to
one, repeated sound (e3), forming a bridge with the sonata
transformation. Now, in C major, following theme one in its
simplest form, we have motif work which combines, either
successively or simultaneously, the motifs of the introduction and
the themes. In the final phase the transformation creates a very
powerful culmination which is discharged in an original sequence of
chords which create a new type of cadence: E-flat7, C9 (with
5>), B-flat minor, G-flat7, E-flat9> suspended on the
dominant and correlated with a separate metre (3/2), meant only for
it. Then comes the reprise (A-flat), ascetically concise, radically
reduced to the initial theme phrase which emerges dolcissimo
armonioso from the delicate background of the ‘harp’ chords. This
phrase transforms in the high register into a quasi cadenza,
suspended amidst vibrating trills and sequences of arabesques,
which gradually weaken to a mur mur, subside, and become a quasi
niente, finally to plunge into silence. This metamorphic form of
theme one in the reprise, a type of literary pars pro toto
synecdoche, is completed only by the coda resting on the material
of the introduc tion and theme. The coda closes with an
extraordinary final cadenza consisting of ‘harp’ repetitions of two
chords, E7 - A-flat, against the background of which is suspended a
sleepily rocking second oscillation of motifs of a homogeneous
figure, pulsating in delicate polyrhythm. Dreams seem to disappear
in the echoes of repetitions, but fascination remains.
a piacere.
Example 4. Sonet 123, b. 78-84
This work, which closes Liszt’s Sonnet triptych, highlights yet
another impor tant feature of the collection. All the Sonnets have
a characteristic chord sequence, although its clarity and context
may differ. Depending on their specifics and context, this creates
a ‘sonnet chord’ or ‘Laura motif. Its basic form is present in the
cadenza which closes the last Sonnet. Its varieties can be found in
the introduction and the beginning of the coda closing the second
Sonnet. It dominates in the introduction to the first Sonnet and
the beginning of its third part. In other words, it makes its
presence felt at moments which are crucial for form development and
produces various melodic-textural contexts.
In music of the past there were ‘reminder motifs’ or ‘leitmotifs’.
It looks as if the ‘Laura motif demonstrates a tendency to stress
the triptych’s integrity. This may have inspired Wagner and his
so-called ‘Tristan chord’. The Sonnets’ harmonics are so
heterogeneous and involve so many problems that they would need a
separate study vis-à-vis the metamorphoses of tonality which were
typical for their times.
The polyversity of Liszt’s Sonnets, based on three texts from
Francesco Pe trarch’s Sonnets to Laura, bears the characteristics
of a palimpsest. The composer superimposed his own texts onto the
Italian master’s poems. This superstructure differs in form, syntax
and technical means although of course in many ways it corresponds
with the original. These correspondences can mainly be found in the
content plan and expression. In the content plan we find Petrarch’s
four main themes: woman, love, nature, and time. These themes are
archetypal. Liszt por trayed the feminine ideal not only in the
Sonnets but also in many other works
of music, including his apology of ‘Ewig-weibliche’ in his Faust
Symphony after Goethe; love, as ‘Hohe Liebe’, gained a perfect
rendition not only in Liszt’s songs but also in his Sonnets where
he conveyed its elations and apprehensions; nature is ‘humanized’
and elevated to the role of a characteristic actor; time is
ubiquitous and the main director of musical events.